The new era of outdoor advertising in Nigeria

Outdoor advertising is a mass-market medium. PHOTO: Journey by Africans

“One thing I love about outdoor advertising is its ability to give a physical presence to brands. Today more of our lives are being lived in a virtual world; it creates an opportunity to give something tangible, physical and visible,” Mako Alabi, CEO of Vimedia Outdoor told CNBC Africa.

“Outdoor advertising is the oldest medium. If you go to the Rome of today you will still see the poster of the Roman Empire in Pompeii and even if it is static, it has its place, but of cause the digital advertising of today gives you the ability to change copy within seconds basically, and have multiple campaigns on the same location and of cause drive more traffic to that particular location, and you have several audiences and campaigns in one location.”

Social media has promoted outdoor advertising by drawing people’s attention to the different brands available.

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“Beyond social networking, social media is going to take more people looking at what is going on in different brands. You have Twitter, Facebook, many TV channels as well, but at the same time outdoor advertising has to be linked to all these mediums for further reach of the brands.”

The essence of social media’s involvement with advertising is its coming together with other search engines and marketing to promote different brands.

“The whole idea is to create an integrated campaign were outdoor is linked with social media, search engine and direct marketing. You can imagine when a client has a brief and you are able to tie up all this together, that is going to create a more impactful campaign. So that is exactly what we should do for clients,” Alabi added.

The transformation seen in Nigeria’s outdoor advertising space over the last four years (especially in Lagos) is as a result of the state’s advertising agency, which was created to clean up the city and make it friendly for outdoor advertising. The body created also to regulate and control outdoor advertising and signage display in Lagos.

“One of the first things that has to be done in other parts of Nigeria is to go through what we did in Lagos by ensuring that there is a regulatory authority to clean up the city and make sure it is very amiable to advertising because without the cleaning exercise it becomes very difficult. The reason why we talking about Lagos state now is because it is a better place for outdoor advertising. The clients get value for money; the outdoor advertisers themselves, the owner of the structures also get benefits from whatever they put up. The market is huge from a mobile perspective as well, you link that up to outdoor advertising and it is going to be huge.”